With most of the Lenten season behind us, and Holy Week upon us, now is an appropriate time to ask: Where do we stand on the journey to Easter? What do we thirst for before we are refreshed with the Christian joy of the Resurrection?
Recall that on Ash Wednesday we began these forty days by listening to the words of the prophet Joel: Return to me with your whole heart.
Which part of our heart are we still withholding from God?
The prophet also instructs us to rend our hearts and not our garments. In other words, God asks us to face the great challenge within – to break open, examine, and change the direction of our hearts.
So where are our hearts and our love ultimately directed toward? Is it toward God or toward something else?
In the throes of Holy Week, we remember that God’s love was so directed toward the world that Jesus suffered death so that we might have new life. A death that recalls the old Bob Dylan lyric: I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue / I’d go crawling down the avenue / No, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do / To make you feel my love.
Through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we set out to return that love and draw closer to God, setting aside that which threatens to separate us from the Greatest Love.
But what if you forgot your Lenten penance and practices completely? All the streaks in your prayer apps were broken?
What if you set aside your Lenten commitment because life’s busyness and concerns overcame you?
Or is it possible that you’ve only just started to take these days of preparation more seriously in the final days of Lent?
Or perhaps you are content thus far with how well you have fulfilled this season’s spiritual practices?
No matter where we find ourselves this Lent, we can refocus, rend our hearts further, and break away from the burdens weighing down our conscience and country. We can do this with a National Fast.
In 1863, in the middle of the brutal U.S. Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer “to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” For Lincoln, the American people had “become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace.”
What fast might we offer God at this moment?
A fast from the fear that God’s mercy cannot forgive and free us from our worst personal transgressions.
A fast from the belief that there is only enough mercy to go around for myself and those I care about.
A fast from the relentless daily activity keeping us from resting in God’s peace within.
A fast from letting the past limit us instead of letting God liberate us from it.
A fast from withholding our deepest and sincerely held thoughts and desires when we pray to God.
A fast from those opinions of despair which sow hopelessness in us.
A fast from resentments towards our parents, children, siblings, spouses, friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
A fast from neglecting the relationships we care about the most.
A fast from speaking more than we listen.
A fast from ignoring the children in our lives as bearers of the Kingdom of Heaven.
A fast from seeking to be right instead of seeking to be right with God and our neighbors.
A fast from reacting to our personal and collective pain in the usual, tired ways.
A fast from forgetting that the most important name for each other is “Child of God.”
A fast from ignoring those who call us back to imitating Jesus’ way of mercy.
A fast from doubting that a personal relationship with Jesus is sufficient to heal our wounds and those of the whole world.
A fast from the instinct to punish acts of violence committed against us with equally cruel ones.
A fast from the short-term thinking that endangers humanity, the Earth, and all living creatures.
A fast from enlisting the name of God in dark pursuits.
A fast from war and violence as instruments of change.
A fast from the certainty that our weapons will finally give us a lasting security that only God can truly grant.
A fast from confusing the glory of God with the glory of a single country.
A fast from refusing to believe that God call us to greatness by being last and not by being first.
A fast from using our positions of leadership to self-serve and not serve.
A fast from believing that we cannot both safeguard our country and safeguard human dignity.
A fast from dehumanizing and disparaging the stranger and immigrant in our midst.
A fast from placing our ultimate trust in our own human power and not in God’s.
A fast from only placing our personal problems in the hands of God and not our local, national, and global ones.
A fast from ignoring our call to be American Samaritans who bind up wounds, instead of wounding.
A fast from following those who do not help us to love our enemies.
A fast from sacrificing human lives instead of sacrificing ourselves for them.
A fast from the belief that allegiance to any country takes priority over our fidelity to God.
A fast from the false idols of riches, honor, and glory so that we can confidently rely on God’s love and grace.
A fast from seeing material wealth only as a personal victory and not a God-given responsibility toward others.
A fast from seeing Jesus as the opposite of a poor, humble, servant.
A fast from distrusting that God can reconcile our divisions.
A fast from acting contrary to the Gospel commandment of love so that no one can say in a nation filled with Christians, where is their God?
A fast from avoiding what is difficult, what we fear, and what is impossible.
A fast from denying that the way of the Christian is the way of the cross.
A fast from thinking that it is too late to return our hearts to God.
To undertake such a fast is to take seriously the ancient words of the prophet and to embark on the itinerary of a lifetime. We must return our hearts to God time and again in ways that last far beyond one Lenten season. In which fast do you hear God’s voice crying out? What other profound change in your heart do you desire? May we pray that in a year’s time, when we are back in Lent, that our fast continues and that the Crucified One remains first in our hearts.